Categories

Follow Us

Flipeez, Brush Pets, and More Obnoxious Kids Infomercials

August 1, 2013, by Paul Lucas

Cover your ears! We’re back with yet another roundup of infomercials using annoying jingles to sell cutesy animal toys to your kids.

Flipeez – The “Action Hat”

The infomercial for the Stompeez slippers featured a jingle that managed to be both very simple and completely unbearable at the same time. Now the makers of Stompeez have reanimated and reworked that infernal tune to promote a hat called Flipeez:

In order to get various animal designs to fit over a kid’s head, they all needed to be transformed into highly mutated versions of those animals. Most people who look at this…

…would not guess that it was a monkey. In fact, they will probably be surprised to learn that it is supposed to resemble a non-extinct land animal from planet Earth.

Flipeez are available in monkey, kitty, owl, puppy, rabbit, and raccoon versions. There is also a monster Flipeez, which is entirely redundant.

Also disturbing is the sheer joy with which these two boys engage in mutual squeezing of each others’ Flipeez hats:

Over the years we’ve seen infomercials for stuffed animals that turn into pillows, blankets, night lights, backpacks, and more. But they may be running out of ideas because Ball Pets are stuffed animals that turn into balls.

Loading the player…

A rolled up Ball Pet will undoubtedly be the worst ball your kid has to play with.

The rap song that tells us BallPets “came from outer space” is a lame attempt to make this toy more exciting. And the claim that a Ball Pet “promotes active playtime” is a lame attempt to make parents think they can fight childhood obesity by just buying a toy off a TV infomercial.

Hoddie Pets – A Hooded Sweatshirt with a Severed Animal Head

Tired of the syrupy jingles, Hoodie Pets made the bold choice to promote their product with an indie lesbian folk-rock song instead:

Hoodie Pets are simply hoodies with stuffed animal heads stuck to the front. It’s like those game heads mounted to a hunter’s trophy wall, but sticking out of your child’s abdomen instead.

Hoodie Pets are sold at independent coffee shops throughout the greater Portland area with 1% of all profits donated to the Justice for Trayvon Foundation.

Picket Pals – Huh?

The Picket Pals product actually doesn’t have a TV infomercial yet, but it does have an awful jingle:

Loading the player…

After searching through the official website, I still have no idea why this product would be called “Picket Pals.” They say Picket Pals keep kids company at nightmaking them exactly like every other stuffed animal ever made. PicketPals each come with a booklet that is supposed to teach lessons about things like Patience and Hygiene. They also come with a Certificate of Achievement that looks like it was made with clip art in Microsoft Word:

For such a squeaky-clean product it is ironic that every Picket Pal looks like Eric Cartman from South Park…

…and the jingle sounds so much like this song:

Hug A Lots – The Wearable Stuffed Animal Pelt

This is another wearable animal carcass like Stretchkins, but without any pretense of promoting exercise:

After a few moments like these…

…your Hug A Lot might actually start smelling like the rotting skin of an animal.

Brush Pets – The Talking Toothbrush

Brush Pets come to us from the makers of Pillow Pets, the product that birthed the unholy stuffed animal/cutesy jingle infomercial genre. BrushPets are toothbrushes that give kids commands about how to brush properly.

How considerate for parents to provide such a convenient channel for demons to gain effective control over their children’s minds.

The Ball Pets are actually knock-offs of Fur Berries, a toy which came out when I was a child which ripped off Popples. They came out in 2007, the same year one of the Popples revivals came out. I used to yell “Popples rip-off!” whenever the ad came on TV during Saturday morning cartoons I watched as a child, like Care Bears, Horseland, 321 Penguins, LarryBoy, My Friend Rabbit and VeggieTales.
Also, the Picket Pals song sounds like the CiTV intro that goes “Here we go, it’s half past three, it’s time for fun, it’s time to see all your friends on CiTV!”